Quite often someone will ask a question and the answers are really worth taking note of. The problem is that those postings eventually slide out of sight as more things get posted. Of course there is the search facility but if you don't quite know what to search on you might just miss some pearls of wisdom that you really could do with reading.To help prevent this from happening how about flagging up any gems you find to a Moderator ( Nicola Wood, Robin Fawcett or Hugh Spencer) via the Private Message system?The Moderator can then see if they agree with you about the topic and if they do they can make it a 'Sticky' topic which keeps it at the top for others to find.

My understanding from hanging out on quite a few forums is people use the board by starting with an interest in a topic that is roughly equivalent to one of the subject areas, so they are interested in say bowl turning or tools. They would click on that subject area then scroll through to see what people had been posting. If things that had been identified as useful are stickied to the top they will find them first. That's our initial, low hassle idea anyway. I think the index is a great supporting tool if you want to put the time in; like with a book, if you want to go directly to something specific you use the index, if you want to read around a subject you use the chapter headings.

I use other forums too such as the IForgeIron forum, and perhaps the best of the forums here could be moved into a 'tutorial' section. I completely agree about the suggestion; the chats are great, and whilst the thread can meander, you generally always pick up some cracking stuff. But sometimes the good stuff slips away. Items such as Robin's step-by-step pictorial guides, or the bowl in 39 steps by Paul should be placed in a permanent section. Perhaps the easiest way to do this would be to create a moderators' only topic called 'tutorials' within the 'greenwood working' section. If stuff pops up now and again that should be kept, it could be copied into this section. It would be great for beginners like myself (and I appreciate there is a beginner's corner). Either that, or create a tutorial section outside the forum linked within the main site, but that would require a little more work from folk who I guess would rather be out in the workshop...

Robin Fawcett wrote:There are nearly 5000 posts on this forum now. I have stickied some threads of note but if you use the Search facility it's building into a really good index a bit like a greenwoodwiki.

If you type bowl you get 607 hitsspoon 315hazel 53chair 155skew 72birch 134knife ??etc.Like a book with another book for the index.

Now those are interesting stats. I remember having a quite heated debate in the gazzette about 10 years ago, when I and a few others wanted the APT to consider widening its remit and becoming a greenwoodworkers association. I remember Veronica suggesting that everyone she knew actually wanted to be chairmakers. I am just off to do a few more spoon and bowl posts.

The tutorials and some of Nicola's diagrams and some of the photographic ones etc.I also found that the search was becoming the book of the book.I usually knew there was a post I wanted but it was taking me ages to find some.

Re the index:As a beginner and also someone with many years in the design business (both print and web), I reckon the index idea is ideal. Instant links at your finger-tips. Okay, the odd serendipitous moment might slip past, but for most of the time it would mean instant access to whatever topic is listed. It does mean someone has to put it together, though...!

I copied the draft from the other thread into this one and called it "Draft Index" until you're ready to go public.

The links are made as Nicola showed;{url=LINKHERE}index word{/url} only use square brackets and not curly ones.

I've been fairly arbitrary but tried to select definitive postings or threads and definitely those that are posted as tutorials or videos.These were the ones I'd like to find among all the similar terms.The posting of the 3 legged chopping block construction could be added - probably twice as 'chopping block' and also 'European joints' as it shows both.

Hugh I'm assuming that all the threads in "Indexed pages of interest" are hidden not just the one thread. Is this OK?